Club Kids

The Club Kids were a group of young New York City dance club personalities led by Michael Alig and James St. James in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The group was notable for its members' flamboyant behavior and outrageous costumes. In 1988, writer Michael Musto wrote about the Club Kids' "cult of crazy fashion and petulance": "They ... are terminally superficial, have dubious aesthetic values, and are master manipulators, exploiters, and, thank God, partiers."[1][2]

The group was also recognized as an artistic and fashion-conscious youth culture. They were a definitive force in New York City's underground club culture at the time. Several Club Kids have made long-lasting contributions to mainstream art and fashion. According to former Club Kid "Walt Paper" Cassidy, "The nightclub for me was like a laboratory, a place where you were encouraged and rewarded for experimentation."[3] However, Alig and numerous followers began heavy drug use. He began adding drug dealers to the Club Kids roster and Gatien's payroll, and increasing numbers of Club Kids became addicted to drugs.[4]

Contents

The group, which Alig estimates included up to "750 in the early 90s at different levels",[5] comprised (among others), its creators - Michael Alig; "Jenny Jewels" and Michael Tronn, who helped organize the early "Outlaw Parties";[6] and Alig's mentor/friend/rival James St. James (born James Clark). Others were the following:

Alig moved to NYC from his hometown - South Bend, Indiana - in 1984 and began hosting small events. In 1987, he supplanted Andy Warhol as a leading New York partier; in an Interview Magazine article, Alig said: "We were all going to become Warhol Superstars and move into The Factory. The funny thing was that everybody had the same idea: not to dress up but to make fun of people who dressed up. We changed our names like they did, and we dressed up in outrageously crazy outfits in order to be a satire of them--only we ended up becoming what we were satirizing." [32]

The Club Kids' aesthetic emphasized outrageousness, "fabulousness", and sex. Gender was fluid, and everything was DIY. In Musto's words: "It was a statement of individuality and sexuality which ran the gamut, and it was a form of tapping into an inner fabulousness within themselves and bringing it out." [33]

As the group's influence grew, they spread from the back rooms of lesser-known clubs to venues such as Area, Rudolf Piper's iconic Danceteria, and the Palladium. From there, Alig and his gang went on to virtually run Peter Gatien's club network, including the notorious Club USA, Palladium, Tunnel, and The Limelight, a large Chelsea club in a deconsecrated church. To draw crowds into these venues, Alig and the Club Kids began holding guerilla-style "outlaw parties", where, fully costumed and ready to party, they would hijack locations like Burger King, Dunkin' Donuts, McDonald's, ATM vestibules, the old High Line tracks before their conversion to a park, and the New York City Subway blasting music from a boombox and dancing until the police cleared them out. Alig even "threw a party in a cardboard shantytown rented from its homeless inhabitants",[20] whom he paid with cash and crack cocaine.[6] He ensured that such events always happened in the vicinity of an actual club to which the group could decamp.[34][32] At the height of their cultural popularity, the Club Kids toured the United States (throwing parties, "certifying" those clubs for inclusion in the Club Kids network, and recruiting new members[6]), and appeared on several talk shows, including Geraldo, The Joan Rivers Show, and the Phil Donahue Show.[35][36][37]

The beginning of the movement's decline was marked by an event on Sunday, March 17, 1996, when Alig and his roommate Robert "Freeze" Riggs killed former Limelight employee and reputed drug dealer Andre "Angel" Melendez. After nine months, Alig and Riggs were arrested.[35][38] The group dissipated in the mid-1990s after Mayor Rudy Giuliani's "Quality of Life" crackdown on Manhattan's nightclubs.[33]

The events of Michael Alig's years as a club promoter up to his arrest are covered in James St. James's memoir, Disco Bloodbath: A Fabulous but True Tale of Murder in Clubland (1999),[39] re-released with the title Party Monster after the release of the eponymous 2003 film.[40]

The documentary film, Glory Daze: The Life and Times of Michael Alig (2015),[16] reviews the creation, rise, and dispersion of the Club Kids phenomenon and the life of Michael Alig, including his return to New York City after serving a 17-year prison sentence for murdering Andre "Angel" Melendez.[42][43][44][8]

Music:

Greg Tanoose wrote and produced the song "What's In" with Michael Alig and DJ Keoki. The song is the most recent and modern Club Kid single. It features founder Michael Alig on vocals.

Alig and Melendez's friend, Screamin Rachael, wrote the song "Give Me My Freedom/Murder in Clubland" after Alig and Gitsie took a road trip to visit her in Denver, arriving five weeks after Melendez's "disappearance". The lyrics to a backwards loop in the song include such lines as, "Michael, where's Angel?", and, "Did someone just cry wolf, or us he dead?"[45][46]

Television: Melendez's murder case has also been featured on the TV series:

Clubland: The Monster Pop Party (2013), a musical adaptation of St. James' book Party Monster and its 2003 eponymous film adaptation, debuted April 11, 2013 at the American Repertory Theater's Club Oberon, with book, music, and lyrics by Andrew Barret Cox and produced by Jacob S. Porter[49]